Those Vital Clichés
By Waldo Jaquith
March 14th, 2008
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This was supposed to be a blog entry about how authors submit poetry to us covering clichéd topics that there’s just no way we’re going to print. But then I did the math, calculating the percentage of our submissions and published work that contain any of a dozen mainstays of poetic terminology, and found that precisely the opposite is true.
| submitted | published | |
|---|---|---|
| water | 19.9% | 24.8% |
| death | 14.1% | 15.2% |
| blood | 11.7% | 13.8% |
| stone | 11.1% | 16.0% |
| bone | 9.1% | 7.8% |
| poetry | 7.6% | 10.3% |
| heart | 7.5% | 6.7% |
| fish | 7.0% | 5.3% |
| birth | 5.5% | 7.4% |
| darkness | 3.9% | 17.0% |
| rust | 3.3% | 2.5% |
| cat | 2.3% | 2.8% |
As it turns out, our editor is all about those dreaded paeans to cats. The moral of the story is that talent transcends topic, I suppose; in the hands of a skilled poet, even stone/bone can be made a vital couplet again.
03/17 Update: Those who exist in the pointy little overlap in the Venn diagram of Lit Geek and Stats Geek may also enjoy the ten most common titles of submissions that we’ve received in the past year, the percentage of submissions that are totally inappropriate for us, our rate of international submissions, and the hazards of being way too efficient in dealing with submissions.
03/17 Update 2: To clarify the original post and to correct some of the blogs linking here: we’re not declaring that we publish “clichéd” poetry, only that words that would appear to be clichéd don’t preclude a poem that uses them from being good, or worthy of publication. As noted in the original post: “talent transcends topic.”
The Virginia Quarterly Review
March 17th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I just read this and thought such impressive statistics required a response–though said response may well highlight the perils of eating lunch at one’s desk on time too often. . . ;-)
Virginia and Those Vital Cliches
Thoughts of death by water
make my blood run cold,
provide ample fodder
for the darkness in my soul.
Virginia with those stones
heavy in her pockets, fish
soon to feast upon her bones,
how instead I would have wished
for her rebirth by poetry
or a delving straight to the heart
of it, past the daily rust and debris
to find calmness at the start
of it, the gentle warm thrum
of a cat lying in a spot of sun.
March 17th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Very nice, Jessica.
I am surprised to see that “love” wasn’t listed as a vital cliche.
March 17th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I’ve written a poem that I think you should consider for publication:
“life”
water
poetry
stone
blood
death
With some faulty math my calculations say this has a 80% chance of being published. You should definitely consider it.
March 17th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
[...] Kottke links today to some statistics released by the Virginia Quarterly Review about the correlation between cliché in poetry and likelihood of publication. It turns out, [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
The only difference
between poetry
and that which is not
poetry
is how you use
the return key.
Which may explain why it is a
dead
art form,
Practiced by many
but read by none.
March 17th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
[...] from kottke: The Virginia Quarterly Review did some simple math on the poems that get accepted in their journal, and they came up with [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
[...] ^ [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Au contraire, wordsworthless. Lyric poetry is read and recited by millions if not billions of devoted fans every single day. Jay Z is the new Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Solomon:
Of course I was making an observation about “literary” poetry and trying to make the trenchant point that despite all the claims that (modern) poetry is so popular, there are thousands as many practitioners as consumers. But I do concede your point, and you have identified a bona fide market for artful verse.
To digress, I will note that while I was typing my first post, my cat jumped on my keyboard and the actual results are shown below. This is the same cat who likes to jump on our piano and plink out discordant tunes and who once jumped on my Bose radio and changed it to a Christian station. Anyway, his poetry is pretty bad, but this was the actual result of his “typing” before I chased him off:
The only difference
between poetry
and that which is not
poetry
is how you use
the return key.
Which may explain why it is
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March 17th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I too despise it.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
[...] the Virginia Quarterly Review’s blog, tried to prove that writers of clichés don’t get published. He discovered the opposite. And in doing so, gave up a juicy list of 12 clichés rampant in (usually) bad, bad poetry. Put them [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
[...] apparently get you into the VQR. Check out their terrifying (on any number of levels) post about it here; I’ve reproduced their handy table [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Worsworthless, your poem is the single coolest thing I have ever read. I shall print it, and carry it with me always.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Zoe, you do flatter me, and I shall carry your response now and ever. It was my first “published” poem.
March 17th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
This 3/17 update 2 did not clarify a thing. Rather, its redundancy diluted the elegance of the original post.
March 17th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
[...] wonder what titles are most common in poetry these days? How about the most cliched topics that are actually still accepted? I don’t know about you, but I was very happy to see that none of my titles are on the first [...]
March 18th, 2008 at 10:21 am
[...] but: There’s hope for your poetry if you hit some clichéd themes! [...]
March 18th, 2008 at 11:14 am
[...] If you ever wondered whether using certain buzz words in your work will make it more likely that it will be published, here at last is the answer from the candid folks at the Virginia Quarterly Review. [...]
March 19th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[...] Interesting tidbit from The Virginia Quarterly: Waldo Jaquith wrote, “This was supposed to be a blog entry about how authors submit poetry to us covering clichéd topics that there’s just no way we’re going to print. But then I did the math, calculating the percentage of our submissions and published work that contain any of a dozen mainstays of poetic terminology, and found that precisely the opposite is true.” Check it out here. [...]
March 20th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
[...] “darkness” six times already. And it’s not even done yet. So I’m a shoe-in.[See all cliches and percentages]And for those of us who obsess over this stuff, Virginia Quarterly has also released the top ten [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
[...] Those Vital Clichés [...]
January 10th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
[...] every poet has the sworn duty to excise every cliché from every line of every poem. The ratio of clichés to any given moral indignation can [...]
May 15th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
[...] and Erin Keane followed up with one of her own. And, actually, they’re not bad. It’s those vital clichés [...]